Author Event: Sam Lightner, jr

Outdoor enthusiast, climber, and history buff, Sam Lightner, jr. will read from and lead a discussion about his book, Heavy Green: The Collision of Two Unlikely Missions in America's Secret War, on Monday evening, January 27 at 5:30.

Lightner never intended to be a writer. "It just happened." he explains, "I fell in love with Thailand on my first trip to the country in 1989, and was so inspired that I had to put my experience down with pen on paper." Since then he has been traveling and writing all over the world. Most of his work has revolved around the outdoor industry, specifically climbing, but Lightner is passionate about history and actually prefers to write on that subject.

Growing up in Jackson, Wyoming, Lightner learned to climb in the Tetons when he was 16 years old. He attended Southern Methodist University and the University of Wyoming, where he studied history. Lightner lived in Krabi Province of Thailand for much of the 1990s and 2000s. In the days following the December 1994 tsunami in Thailand, he created Rally for Railay. He helped search for the missing, assisted in body identification and raised more than $70,000 to help the people of Thailand from purchasing food supplies to buying fishermen new boats. Lightner has also called Moab, Utah, and Banff, Alberta, Canada home. He moved to Lander, Wyoming, in 2012, where he lives with his wife Liz and dogs Lexi and Moki.

Synopsis of the Book

By 1967 the Pentagon could see that stopping the flow of weapons into South Vietnam was the only way the United States could win the war. Key to this effort was the aerial bombing of certain supply depots and constriction points along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but the weather and air defenses of North Vietnam made that task nearly impossible. Taking advantage of the rugged terrain of Laos, and with the help of the Thai Special Forces and the Laotian hill tribes, the CIA put into place a covert program that could pinpoint each of the bombing raids. This top-secret operation would tilt the axis of the war, and the North Vietnamese had to counter it. Meticulously researched and based on information classified until 1988, Heavy Green is a historical novel that tells the true story of this secret operation and the daring raid that was designed to bring it down.